Tsaritsa. Then Alexandra knelt while the Metropolitan prayed for the Tsar. While everyone else remained standing, Nicholas alone dropped on his knees to pray for Russia and her people. After being anointed with Holy Oil, Nicholas swore his oath to rule the empire and preserve autocracy as Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias.* Then, for the first time and only time in his life, the Tsar entered the sanctuary to receive the sacrament as a priest of the church. As Nicholas walked up the altar steps, the heavy chain of the Order of St. Andrew slipped from his shoulders and fell to the floor. It happened so quickly that no one noticed except those standing close to the Tsar. Later, lest it be taken as an omen, all these were sworn to secrecy.
By tradition, a tsar crowned himself, taking the crown from the hands of the Metropolitan and placing it on his own head. In planning his coronation, Nicholas had wished to use for this purpose the eight hundred-year-old Cap of Monomakh, a simple crown of gold filigree said to have been used by Vladimir Monomakh, twelfth-century ruler of Kievan Russia. Besides emphasizing his attachment to Russia’s historic past, Monomakh’s Cap had the distinct advantage of being light: it weighed only two pounds. But the iron etiquette of the ceremony made this impossible, and Nicholas lifted onto his head the huge nine-pound Imperial Crown of Russia made in 1762 for Catherine the Great. Shaped like a bishop’s miter, it was crested with a cross of diamonds surmounting an enormous uncut ruby. Below, set in an arch supporting the cross and in the band surrounding the head, were forty-four diamonds, each an inch across, surrounded by solid masses of smaller diamonds. Thirty-eight perfect rosy pearls circled over the crown on either side of the central arch. Nicholas let the gem-encrusted crown rest on his head for a moment. Then, reaching up, he took it off and carefully placed it on Alexandra’s head. Finally, he replaced it on his own head and Alexandra was given a smaller crown. Nicholas kissed her and, taking her hand, led her back to the two thrones. The ceremony ended with Empress Marie and every member of the Imperial family approaching to do homage to the crowned Tsar of all the Russias.
Despite the length of the ceremony, Alexandra later wrote to one of her sisters that she had never felt tired, so strong were her own emotions. To her, the ceremony seemed a kind of mystic marriage between herself and Russia. At the coronation, she left behind the girl who grew up in Darmstadt and England. In her heart she now truly thought of herself, not only as Empress, but as “
At the end of the service, the newly crowned monarchs walked from the church wearing brocaded mantles embroidered with the double-headed Imperial eagle. They climbed the Red Stairway, turned and bowed three times to the crowd. From thousands of throats roared a mighty cheer. From the muzzles of massed cannons, thunder rolled across the city. Above everything, making it impossible for a man to speak into the ear of his neighbor, clanged the thousands of bells of Moscow. From the towers and churches of the Kremlin the concentrated ringing of the bells obliterated all other sounds.
Among the seven thousand guests who dined at the coronation banquet, among the grand dukes and royal princes, the emirs and ambassadors, was one room filled with plain Russian people in simple dress. They were there by hereditary right, for they were the descendants of people who, at one time or another, had saved the life of a Russian tsar. The most honored among them were the descendants of an old servant, Ivan Susanin, who had refused under torture to tell the Poles where young Michael Romanov, first of the Romanov tsars, was hiding. At hundreds of tables the guests sat down and found before them a roll of parchment tied with silken cords. Inside, in illuminated medieval lettering, was the menu. The meal consisted of borshch and pepper-pot soup, turnovers filled with meat, steamed fish, whole spring lamb, pheasants in cream sauce, salad, asparagus, sweet fruits in wine, and ice cream.
On a dais beneath a golden canopy, Nicholas and Alexandra dined alone, according to ancient tradition, watched from the galleries by the cream of the Russian nobility. The highest court officials personally passed them their golden plates. During the lengthy meal, foreign ambassadors were admitted one by one to drink the health of the Imperial couple. For the rest of the day, Nicholas and Alexandra greeted their other guests, moving through the great Kremlin halls, hung with blue silk and lined with gilt chairs. All day the Tsar wore the huge coronation crown, so big that it came down almost over his eyes. Resting directly on the scar made by the Japanese fanatic, its great weight soon gave him a headache. The Empress walked at his side, still in her silver-white dress, her train supported by a dozen pages.
At the coronation ball that night, the Kremlin shimmered with light and music. The gowns worn by Russian women were thought by foreign ladies to be shockingly far off the shoulder. There were tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings, some with stones as big as robins’ eggs. Grand Duchess Xenia, Nicholas’s sister, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, were covered with emeralds. Other women were drowning in sapphires and rubies. Alexandra wore a thick girdle of diamonds around her waist. Nicholas himself was draped with an enormous collar, made of dozens of clusters of diamonds, reaching around his entire chest. Even in a day which had seen a thousand kingly fortunes, the jewels that appeared that night brought gasps of awe.
That night the entire city of Moscow glowed with the light of special illuminations. Within the Kremlin itself, the churches and public buildings were lit by thousands of electric light bulbs which all flashed on when Alexandra pressed a button hidden in a bouquet of roses. Outside, millions of candles flickered in the streets and homes. At ten o’clock, when Nicholas and Alexandra walked onto a Kremlin balcony overlooking the river to gaze at the city, their faces shone with reflected light. Even after they went to bed, the walls of their bedchamber in the Kremlin apartment still were covered with shadows from the illuminated city outside.
The day following the coronation belonged to the people of Moscow. Grand Duke Serge, who was Governor General of Moscow, had arranged the traditional huge open-air feast which the Tsar and the Empress would attend in a field outside the city. Cartloads of enameled cups, each stamped with the Imperial seal, were to be given away as souvenirs, and the authorities had ordered hundreds of barrels of free beer.
Khodynka Meadow, the field selected for this mass festivity, was a training ground for troops of the Moscow garrison and it was crisscrossed by a network of shallow trenches and ditches. It was the only place which could accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Muscovites expected to pour out of the city to see the new Tsar and Tsaritsa.
The night before, thousands of people walked to the meadow without bothering to go to bed. By dawn, five hundred thousand people waited, some already drunk. The wagons loaded with cups and beer began to arrive and draw up behind skimpy wooden railings. The crowd watched with interest and began moving forward, full of good nature. Suddenly a rumor passed that there were fewer wagons than had been expected and that there would be beer enough only for those who got there first. People began to run. The single squadron of Cossacks on hand to keep order was brushed aside. Men tripped and stumbled into the ditches. Women and children, knocked down in the mass of rushing, pushing bodies, felt feet on their backs and heads. Their noses and mouths were ground into the dirt. Over the mutilated, suffocating bodies, thousands of feet relentlessly trampled.
By the time police and more Cossacks arrived, the meadow resembled a battlefield. Hundreds were dead and thousands wounded. By afternoon, the city’s hospitals were jammed with wounded and everybody knew what had happened. Nicholas and Alexandra were stunned. The Tsar’s first frantic impulse was to go immediately into a prayerful retreat. He declared that he could not possibly go to the ball being given that night by the French Ambassador, the Marquis de Montebello. Once again, the uncles, rallying around their brother Grand Duke Serge, intervened. To adorn the ball, the French government had sent priceless tapestries and treasures of silver plate from Paris and Versailles, along with one hundred thousand roses from the south of France. The uncles urged that Nicholas not magnify the disaster by failing to appear and thus giving offense to France’s only European ally. Tragically, the young Tsar gave in and agreed.
“We expected that the party would be called off,” said Sergius Witte, the Minister of Finance. “[Instead] it took place as if nothing had happened and the ball was opened by their Majesties dancing a quadrille.” It was a painful evening. “The Empress appeared in great distress, her eyes reddened by tears,” the British ambassador informed Queen Victoria. Alexander Izvolsky, later Russian Foreign Minister, declared that “far from being insensible, they [the Imperial couple] were deeply moved. The Emperor’s first impulse was to order a suspension of the festivities and to retire to one of the monasteries. The Tsar’s uncles urged him not to cancel anything to avoid greater scandal.”
Expressing their grief, Nicholas and Alexandra spent a day going from one hospital to another. Nicholas ordered that the dead be buried in separate coffins at his own expense rather than dumped into the common grave customary for mass disasters. From the Tsar’s private purse, the family of every victim received a thousand roubles.
